


Binary Stars

by Savrola



Category: Fire Emblem: Soen no Kiseki/Akatsuki no Megami | Fire Emblem Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn
Genre: Character Death, Destiny, Fate & Destiny, Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Romantic Soulmates, Soulmates, no betas we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-01
Updated: 2019-07-01
Packaged: 2020-06-02 10:57:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19440046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Savrola/pseuds/Savrola
Summary: Before death takes you, you receive a gift: the knowledge, the sight of all your lives past lived, your joys and pain past felt.  Soren sees only one man.  And then he lives.





	Binary Stars

Just as the reaper rounds the corner and locks eyes with you, you may be given the final gift, the final kindness to know who and what you really are. Because you are neither your body nor your experiences in this life, only the fleeting bits and pieces that are the same across time and space, across every incarnation and reincarnation of you.

The branded boy Soren had been close enough that day, had pulled himself between two thick, winding tree roots and agreed with himself that it was both comfortable and not a bad place to die. He'd run out of fury for his parents, for those who had cursed him and thrown rocks at him never knowing the sting they caused beneath his skin, behind his ribcage. He'd run out of tears to cry. There, he saw the vast, green clearing as a waiting room and wondered what it might be like to meet Ashera.

Death neared. He saw visions, eternity, blackness. He saw himself, again and again, meeting a man and feeling his heart seize up.

Early morning, the first sun's rays. They lay together chest to chest in a castle in Goldoa -- this man was the only beorc inside the entire nation, the only one allowed and only on his, the prince's, command. He ran his hands through blue hair turned white and kissed his forehead, knew he would not wake. He would never wake again. Calmly, easily, he slid his hand into the bedside table and uncapped a bottle of poison, flavored with blueberries.

A tower filled with blue light. Blood, so much blood. The life was seeping out of him and then he saw that man fall to his knees, truly defeated for the first time in a long time, and he suddenly had the strength to run to him -- but not to save him. They collapsed together there, each trying to hold the other up, Soren cursed his staff for being broken and rested his head on the man's chest until those breaths began to slow. He died first. Into the dark, Soren followed. A furious god continued to rage.

Cheering, lights so bright they must have been artificial. A game, two teams of overeager teenagers running and tackling one another, women in bright skirts chanting, and he is all alone swathed in black on the far bleacher, right at the front. The man is there but not a man, only a boy, and he throws the ball and wins. Everyone rushes out to raise him up, to slather him in love but he comes to Soren, lonely little Soren and kisses him in front of everyone, wraps him up and doesn't want to let go. That night they are walking home and they are stopped, words that hurt inside with no stones thrown at all, a threat, wrestling -- the boy takes a bullet for him. Soren isn't worthy of one. He's beaten, until it all goes dark.

_But he is always there, they always find each other and they are never, ever alone. Why?_

_Why does he always go first?_

Soren is ill. Very ill. He isn't going to get any better and they're old anyway so they say goodbye to their children and leave, with no intention of coming back. His daughter embraces him and weeps because she knows, she can read him --

They're the only two left, there is death all around them, broken bodies, they kiss once and then make a break for the door but the Begnion army finds them first and they don't even make it halfway it's so fast --

The man falls to the ground at the Ribahn river, the same knight who slew his father stands before him in armor made of solid night sky, raises his sword and Soren screams _no_ and throws himself between them --

\-- a rock hurling through space showing mostly blue but a little green, all the way down to Gallia, the forest where he was. A figure approaching. 

Death fled.

The boy kneeled beside him, looked down and slowly reached his hand out. "Hey, are you alright?"

_No. No, I'm not alright. Who are you? Why do you always come to a wretched thing like me? What is your name?_

As if on cue, "My name is Ike."

He wanted to say it, so badly. But his mouth didn't like modern speech, didn't take to it well. Ike reached for him again, and he whimpered instead.

The prince inside him was eloquent, brilliant, biting. Where is he at a time like this? Where were any of his other selves, whom he had just met? 

"Hey, are you hungry?" Oh, he was... For the first time in weeks he'd forgotten how hungry he was. Ike unrolled a piece of cloth and offered his sandwich and Soren took it, gobbled it down and studied him.

It was the same boy. Absolutely. Who fell in the tower, who died in his sleep in Goldoa, who lay screaming with a bullet in his chest while Soren reached for his hand and fell short.

Ike tried to bring him back, said there would be more food, but Soren could only bring himself to shake his head and recede into the tree roots.

They would meet again tomorrow. That was agreeable.

5 years later, Soren finds him again. He is now armed with modern tongue.

He sees Ike playing outside the fort with a green-haired boy his age, sees the man he'd come to realize was the boy's father approaching from a distance. He watches. Waits. He stands on the road in front of the man, arms crossed, tells him that he needs work. He'll earn his keep. He'll work hard. He isn't a good cook (never had been, as per the prince) but he would do his best at anything he was asked to do. He could use wind magic and he has used it on people a few times. He isn't afraid of a fight (he'd never been that, either).

Greil has a kind heart. He sees the determination, the hand-me-down charity clothes the church had given him, and the brand. And he simply nods and tells him to come to the fort. Greil is called away at the gate, leaves briefly to speak to one of the town council members about cattle thieves, and Soren finds Ike still with a ball in his hand. "Ike."

"Yeah," Ike says, cocks his head, "How did you know my name?"

Soren's heart hurts. But it is the same now, as it has always been, they two are stars in mutual orbit and they always will be, even if he doesn't know -- "Your father told me," he says. 

_You can lead the way until he comes around,_ says a part of his soul to him, _he always comes around, the simple oaf._

He can wait forever, if need be.


End file.
